On the fire line this week in Southern California, embers grow big as baseballs, ridgetops glow as if electrified, trees pop and explode into flame. Protection tents sit abandoned, and hacked-off hoses are left attached to hydrants — reminders of how fast a fire fueled by Santa Ana winds can jump a road and rout its attackers.

Crews go 20, 30 hours without sleep, waiting for reinforcements, who in some cases are prison inmates. The tired relieve the exhausted, and the exhausted try to rest while riding to the intense heat and smoke of the next blaze.

For many fire crews, the fast-moving flames force them into quick decisions on which homes to save, and which to let burn — much like a triage system used by medics on a battlefield. Often, such decisions are made based on nothing more than a home's landscaping.

Only those who have seen a wildfire up close really know what it's like, said Dan Stucki, 25, a firefighter from Cottonwood Heights, Utah, who is a member of the federally funded Cedar City Hotshots fire crew. It's among dozens of units from throughout the West that have scrambled here to help local departments fight the 16 fires that have scorched about 750 square miles in a broad arc from north of Los Angeles to the Mexican border.

Most of the public doesn't understand the intensity of the battle against the fires that has been taking place this week in Southern California, Stucki said: "They think we're all spraying water."

USA TODAY visited crews on three fronts of the firestorm that has forced more than 500,000 people from their neighborhoods and destroyed at least 1,800 homes.

It is a complex battlefield. On the ground, men and women have used hand tools and set fires to stop fires by creating a burned area to deprive an advancing fire of fuel. And 23,000 feet above, an unmanned military aircraft pierced the smoke below with infrared cameras that streamed images to a command post that gave firefighters details about the latest whims of unpredictable blazes.

As the region's winds finally shifted Thursday and picked up moisture from the Pacific Ocean, temperatures cooled and fire crews gained ground. In some areas, homeowners were allowed to return to their neighborhoods — many to rubble, others to barely damaged homes. Few of those who fled the canyons of Southern California were aware of the drama that played out near their cabins, ranch homes and mini-mansions as fire crews battled the flames, heat and combustible brush.

Rice Fire, Fallbrook

About midnight Wednesday, the radio around Jo Cantos' neck crackled — a call for help. Part of a "controlled burn" had flared up and threatened to race out of control. Her crews were needed to cut more brush and pour more water.

In her part of the war against the flames, Cantos commanded a different kind of fire crew: a company of prison inmates who, in exchange for $1 an hour and two days off their sentences for each day they work, have helped fight the fires by using hand tools to clear brush.

When an ashy, red dawn broke Thursday over the canyons, Cantos, 49, and her company of 16 inmates had achieved tentative victory.

The hottest spot of the Rice Fire, which had forced evacuation of Fallbrook's entire population of 29,000 had been subdued — "laid down," in firefighter lingo — before it could leap a river and open a new front in inaccessible mountains to the north.

Hundreds of homes had been saved.

"Our goal was to stop it and avoid at all costs it going around that curve, because from there it would take off and this fire would be in Temecula," she said, referring to a city more than 10 miles away.

Cantos' team spent Wednesday cutting lines through the brush intended to ring the raging fire and prevent it from moving into areas where there were homes, barns and other structures.

Her crewmembers are convicted felons assigned to minimum-security camps. Each inmate had a hand tool — a chain saw, a heavy pick-ax known as a Pulaski, or a hoe-rake called a McLeod. Each crewmember is called by the tool he carries.

Cantos is one of the few women leading such crews, and said there had been no problems with hers. "They're not supposed to be violent offenders — assault, rape, arson," she said with a laugh. "But you know how it goes. Sometimes they slip through the cracks."

When the midnight call for help came, the new flames were only a mile or 2 away. But Cantos and her crew had to drive along curving back roads for more than 10 miles to get there, then lugged thousands of feet of coiled hose down a narrow trail to the canyon floor.

Through the night the crew poured water on the fire, dampening the soil to try to ensure no sparks would ride the wind and revive the inferno.

About 3 a.m. they slowly bumped their way back up the hill to a paved road and napped for a few hours in the early morning cold. Their 24-hour shift ended at 7 a.m., but it was after 8 before they could leave the canyon and head back to their base for a day's rest. At dawn today, they'll be back, at this or another hot spot.

The battle against the Rice Fire had gotten off to a slow start, said Keith Caldwell of CalFire, the state's wildfire-fighting agency. It took time for crews and engines to arrive, and for conditions to clear so helicopters could join the fight.

"We were basically just providing structure protection, and letting this fire push us around," he said.

By Wednesday, when Cantos' crew arrived, the winds were calming. But not every building could be saved. Firefighters had to decide when to give up on one house and try to save the next.

Often that depended on whether houses were surrounded by vegetation — "fuel" firefighters call it. "If your (home) is overgrown and dangerous for our people," Caldwell said, "that's going to be the first one we leave and go on to the next home."

Slide Fire, Running Springs

Surrounded by flames hot enough to singe their eyebrows, a group of U.S. Forest Service firefighters picked a steep mountainside and started climbing.

The heat in the Little Green Valley area near Lake Arrowhead made the job of trying to cut off the fire dangerous enough.

As Arin Doyle rounded a corner in the trail that he and his colleagues had carved out of wilderness, there was a crackling sound from the 40-foot ponderosa pine overhead. Doyle sprinted a few steps as the burning giant fell 5 feet away with a thundering "THUMP!"

"Too close for comfort," said Doyle, leader of the Smith River hand crew from Six Rivers National Forest. Then he went back to work.

The 10-member crew cut a swath through the forest floor. The goal: create a fire break, then set backfires to deny the oncoming blaze fuel — an otherwise gorgeous stand of pines and oaks in fall splendor — to reach a ski resort, homes and businesses a mile away.

The crew's first 16-hour shift on Wednesday was no easier. The fire was moving so fast, Doyle recalled, that it almost divided the crew.

The crew usually drives up to the edge of an oncoming blaze to cut a fire break. Craig Martin, a fire jumper from McCall, Idaho, called it having "one foot in the black," referring to color of the scorched forest floor.

Firefighters worked in three waves. First, those with chain saws cleared overhanging tree branches and dry brush. Then came others with axes to clear more debris. Bill Jaros brought up the rear, carrying a short-handled rake that cleared a 3-foot-wide path of dirt through the leaf-littered landscape. "Quality control," he explained.

The Smith River crew worked its way forward, hoping to hook up with another crew coming from an adjoining ridge. The fire kept trying to creep past them. A few sparks jumped into a nest of wood chips in an old log — "a jackpot," firefighter lingo for a flammable spot.

Then a pine behind them caught fire, indicating the blaze might be about to jump the trail. A firetruck was called in and the area was wet down until thick steam rose with the curling smoke.

After the drenching, a bulldozer improved on the crew's work. At top of the hill, they took a break.

Most of the firefighters were under 30, including three women. For all the risks, the work is not particularly profitable: New hires make about $12 an hour.

Still, Natalie Bazar, 19, a wine-making student at California Polytechnic University, called it "empowering. … You're doing the same job as these big, strong men."

Santiago Fire, Orange

Firefighters such as Frank Mehay of Corona de Tucson, worked to protect people they didn't know and homes they couldn't afford. Mehay and his crew drove more than 350 miles to Orange County. They then spent 28 hours straight fighting the flames, grabbed some sleep, a shower and a few slices of pizza, then went back to work.

Mehay said he felt like a paramedic practicing triage when he arrived at one burning neighborhood. His crew entered the area and began searching for the houses with the best prospects for survival. Then they began to "house sit" — waiting to guard against approaching flames, and covering homes with a fire-retarding foam.

In deciding which houses to protect, Mehay and other firefighters cited these factors:

•An absence of heavy vegetation or other combustibles near the house. Firefighters call it "defensible space."

•Non-combustible roofing, such as tile or asphalt. Wood shake roofs are sometimes thought to be too flammable to be worth saving in a crunch, according to Curtis Ritzman, a firefighter at the scene from Curtis City, Utah.

•Clean roof gutters.

•An escape route for firefighters.

The quaint notion of a wood-shingled dream house, nestled deep in thick forest or on a remote and woodsy hillside, is "a vision of disaster," said Paul Summerfelt, a member of the Flagstaff, Ariz., fire department. "While it's romantic in one sense, it's a write-off," he added, invoking an insurance term.

Mehay said firefighters' safety was a big concern. Some had to take cover under fire tents — that's called "a deploy" — when flames suddenly came near them. Smoke from smoldering fires was firefighters' biggest obstacle, said Stephen Miller, a captain with the Orange County Fire Department.

"It's like you're in a heavy fog," he said. The smoke cover, winds, and dry terrain made the Santiago Fire, burning east of Irvine, unpredictable and furious. On Wednesday, it was considered to be 50% contained, Miller said. But by Thursday afternoon that percentage had dropped to 30%.

A big problem: lack of support from planes dumping fire retardants, either because of smoke or high winds that made flying unsafe.

Despite the hardships, several firefighters said the blazes were the ultimate test over tasks they'd long been trained to perform.

Sara Farr, a firefighter who'd tucked her hair into a bandana, said she tried other jobs, including one doing clerical work. She lasted three months. Too boring, she recalled. She tried landscaping: not satisfying. So she signed with the Cedar City Hotshots in Utah. This was her first fire season.

Despite the danger — and the constant cellphone calls from her worried parents — she said she enjoyed the work: "We're doing what we love. It's what we do."

The Santiago Fire did things that Casey King, a soot-covered firefighter from Cottage Grove, Ore., had never seen before.

"It's the worst I've seen in the West," said King, a six-year wildfire veteran. He recalled looking up Wednesday to see "a wall of flame." Fire was crawling down a ridge even though the wind was blowing uphill. His conclusion: "This is extreme fire behavior."

His crew got so close to the fire they had "one foot in the black," meaning they cleared debris but stayed close to an area already burned to avoid being engulfed in flames. Finally, by 9 p.m. Wednesday, conditions got so treacherous the crew was sent back to camp.

Sometimes, he said, "there's nothing you can do. It's a Mother Nature thing."

Woodyard reported from Running Springs; Welch from Fallbrook; and Krantz from Orange. Contributing: Rick Hampson in New York, Patrick O'Driscoll in Denver, and the Associated Press.

To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.

Firefighter Anna Kelly, 24, works the mountainside near Running Springs, Calif., the site of the Slide Fire.

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